I was very proud of her when we went out for sushi one night. She had miso soup, eel roll, pickled ginger, soy sauce, and even some salmon sashimi. And I didn't even have to beg her to just please for the love of god try it!!, she did it all on her own. I think eating with the chopsticks and the funny spoon may have played a part in that. Other than that night her eating habits are really hit or miss. Unfortunately, her favorite restaurant is "Old McDonalds" (Ugh. We are working on that) She also likes "Barrel Cracker", which she frequents with the grandparents, and Indian food.
At 3.5, here are some things going on in Ruby's world: I was very proud of her when we went out for sushi one night. She had miso soup, eel roll, pickled ginger, soy sauce, and even some salmon sashimi. And I didn't even have to beg her to just please for the love of god try it!!, she did it all on her own. I think eating with the chopsticks and the funny spoon may have played a part in that. Other than that night her eating habits are really hit or miss. Unfortunately, her favorite restaurant is "Old McDonalds" (Ugh. We are working on that) She also likes "Barrel Cracker", which she frequents with the grandparents, and Indian food. Her sleeping habits have changed. A nap is no longer a guarantee but they still happen, for the most part. Instead of nap time we call it quiet time though. She doesn't have to sleep as long as she stays in her room and is quiet she is free to play, color, read, whatever. Most of the time she ends up falling asleep. On days she doesn't sleep an early, or at the very least, easy bedtime is all but guaranteed. In the morning she usually doesn't sleep past 8 any longer which really sucks and our attempts at subliminally telling her to sleep until 10 have so far been unsuccessful. We've also found her asleep in random places such as on a massive pile of books on the floor in the corner and right behind her bedroom door. In both cases she had her pillow, a blanket, and had been reading. We've backed off on the screen time quite a bit. There was basically none for the first two years then we realized how glorious it was to just throw on Dinosaur Train and be able to run off and do something, anything in peace. However, the tv (and iPad) just turned Ruby into an even more of a whiny little punk. She's much better behaved when tv isn't involved and listening to her as she's off playing in her room is adorable and hilarious. She still watches stuff, but it's usually only an episode or two of something on the weekends. She's more into being naked now. Not all the time but like whenever she gets out of the shower she doesn't want to put clothes on. And when we went outside to play this past weekend she asked if she could play in the pool with no clothes (and then she asked if she could pee in the grass). I don't particularly care, I'm more concerned with her not being ashamed about her body in the future. Oh yes, and sunburn.
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Heath and I rarely exchange gifts, on any occasion really. I don't know how we got into that habit but this year, it being our ten year anniversary and all, I decided to break tradition. I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to get him so when the opportunity to book a boudoir session, complete with hair and make-up, with Seriously Sabrina Photography presented itself I said, "Fuck it. YOLO, right?" and went ahead and booked it after a little encouragement from a friend. The session was just around the corner, like less than a week away, when I booked it so I had to very quickly find and order some lingerie and then have it rush delivered to ensure timely arrival. I basically only had one shot at it so if what I chose didn't work, well, I'd totally be SOL. Thankfully everything worked out quite well and I happened to find the perfect shoes collecting dust in my closet. (unfortunately Ruby wrangling and Tar.get-ting are not all that conducive to 7" blue suede platform heels. Who would've thought??) I worked the day of the session and afterwards went over the Hilton over at Lexington Green. I am sure the guy at the front desk wondered what the heck was going on when I walked by the desk carrying blue heels and a bright red tulle skirt. I was nervous, being that I rarely flaunt myself in sexy lingerie in front of Heath, let alone complete strangers and a camera, but I already knew the make-up artist and everyone else involved was super cool. By the time my turn came (there were other women getting pictures done as well. I was the only one getting them done for anniversary purposes, most were doing them for wedding gifts for their future hubbies, and I was probably a good 10 years older than most of the other girls) I was standing out in the room in my corset like it something that I did all the time. Did I mention that there were mimosas? Getting my make-up done was strange only because I never really wear make-up, only a bit of mascara and lipstick every once in a blue moon. This time I was wearing everything AND for the first time, fake lashes, which I instantly loved, loved, loved and want to wear every day if only I could apply them. (I have tried once since and it was an epic fail) My hair, sigh, I wish it could look like that ALL the time. CURSE not winning the lottery and having my own personal stylist on hand each morning! Okay, so I may or may not have Googled "boudoir photo poses" and stuff like that beforehand, so that I'd be a rock star in front of the camera. (by "stuff like that" I mean I practiced in front of the mirror in the bedroom, door locked) I'd have my POT LEDOM moment and hit all my angles correctly and wouldn't Tyra be oh so proud of me?! I'm fiercely real, bitch! *snap-snap-snap* Hahahahaha. No. Instead as soon as I stepped up to the curtain I forgot all that I'd practiced and I felt like such a DORK and immediatly began my crazy uncomfortable laughter thing that I do along with making crazy faces. Thankfully, Sabrina was good at directing me and reassuring me that even though it might feel strange, "trust me, it looks amazing!" In the end the shoot turned out to be a ton of fun. I still felt like a dork but it was fun :) I left the session feeling pa-retty dang good about myself and on a crazy adrenaline rush that ended about 10 minutes afterwards. All of the sudden I was crazy ass hungry and friggin' exhausted! I drove straight to McD's, wolfed down a cheeseburger, and then picked up Ruby from daycare. When she saw me in my make up she asked who painted my lips and eyes, lol. Which made me realize, Shit! How am I going to explain the make up and hair when I get home?? There was no way that I was taking off my makeup or getting rid of my curls right away so I ended up telling Heath that I had been a model for my friend Laura who works for Mary Kay. Which is not totally a lie because Laura was the one who did my makeup that day! Woot! Okay, so here are a few photos from the session: The session was done back in March and our anniversary was May 22. It was hard to have to sit on these for so long. I was DYING to give them to him because I knew 1. That he'd totally friggin' love them, and 2. He would definitely NOT be expecting this as my gift since this is something that was most definitely out of my box. I may or may not have told him, "You are going to frickin' LOVE your anniversary gift" which btw inadvertently put the pressure on him to get me an equally as awesome gift. As excited as I was to give them to him when the moment finally came I became nervous. Silly, because he's certainly seen me more naked than this, not to mention giving birth which is pretty much the end all, be all of seeing your significant other in a raw, unfiltered way and these were so, SO much more flattering than all that business. (trust me, I have photographic evidence of that as well) Not to get too detailed (you're welcome) but we'll just say that he liked them very much. Even though these were meant as a gift to him truthfully the session was a gift to myself as well. Everyone deserves to get pampered every once in a while! And even though it's odd for me to see myself in photos like this I am SO happy that I went outside of my comfort zone and did it in the first place. I really didn't think I'd ever have the balls to do something like this. As a bonus now I have these photos to look back on in the future and be all like, "Daaaamn, I was smokin'!" And hopefully when Ruby comes across them accidentally way, way far into the future she'll think the same thing and not be traumatized by them. ;) Outfits: This corset, with black ruffled undies, fishnets, and my favorite heels. For the second outfit I wanted to do something along the line of superheros. The outfit wasn't ideal but I'm pleased with it considering I was literally getting everything together less than a week before the shoot. [Heath's t-shirt, heels (similar; mine were $7 from target :), skirt] In celebration of our ten year anniversary I'd originally wanted to go back to Hawaii, the most amazing place ever. Alas, things came up and we decided that it was better that we be responsible adults and all that boring stuff. Instead, Heath's parents watched Ruby and this past Saturday we went to see X-Men: Days of Future Past (which was awesome) and to Belle Notte for dinner where I ate way too much bread. On Sunday we drove up to Cincinnati for a quick one night get away. We started off by going to IKEA to pick up a few things that we needed for the house. We pulled into the parking lot just after the store opened and we were all like, "We'll just grab what we need and get in and be out in a couple of hours". We wandered for a bit but then focused on our main purpose in going up- to check out this giant desk/office set-up that they have online. It's pricey so we wanted to see it in person before sinking our tax return into it. Well, they didn't have it set up as it appeared on the website, just its individual pieces. Sigh. We were 2 hours in at this point and both Heath and I were frustrated because we'd hoped that the whole process would have been as simple as us finding the display, poking around it a bit, and decided yes or no. But the prospect of leaving with absolutely nothing in which to cross things off the massive to-do list we have was not cool with both of us so we sucked it up and moved on. We ended up not getting the unit, or rather the bits and pieces that make up the unit, and just getting the desks we needed. Another thing we bought was a small couch for downstairs, the goal being that we hang out more downstairs working on our hobbies rather than zoning out in front of the TV watching (fill in tv show of your choice) for hours on end. When we got to the aisle and bin where it was located we whipped out the tape measure and found that, alas, the package was a couple inches longer than what my CR-V would hold. I wasn't too sure about getting it but Heath was in "make it work" mode so we went ahead and bought it anyway. Getting everything into my car was quite the adventure. There was a lot of shoving, removing couch from packaging, more shoving, moving forward of the seats, even more shoving, cursing the fact that we'd forgot to bring bungee cords or twine (why does IKEA not sell these things?), some more shoving and different angling of things and finally we got the dang trunk to latch enough that the trunk light didn't pop on when we started the car. Sure, I couldn't see out of any windows except the windshield and the two front ones, but that's what mirrors are for, right? I found the whole situation quite amusing but when we got into the car Heath said it smelled like, "IKEA and Fail" lol. Four hours, FOUR, after we'd walked in the door we pulled out of the parking lot. Gotta love the great time-suck that is IKEA. Our next stop was MadTree Brewing where we spent the next couple of hours sampling beer, talking, and eating yummy food truck pizza. Then we finally headed towards downtown Cinci. We checked into our hotel, chilled for a bit and then went out to experience some food at the Taste of Cincinnati. The clear winner of what we tried was the deep fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It was basically like eating a donut that had pb&j in the middle, covered with powdered sugar. WIN all the way. Afterwards we wandered over to 21C Hotel Museum to check out the gallery. I am not the biggest fan of contemporary art but I at least try to give it the benefit of the doubt, trying to look past the bs to find some appreciation for what it took to make it or something. Heath however is not a fan and I wish I could have made a video montage of his eye rolling and whatnot as we wandered through the gallery. He was even skeptical of the floor thingy (see how I use those technical artist terms?) which I just thought was cool and fun even though it surely represented overpopulation or something like that.
Monday morning we slept in (hells yes), had lunch, and then drove back to Lexington, hoping all the while that the trunk would stay latched. Thankfully it did and while we waited for the return of our child (who was not pleased that we had the audacity to come home again and take her away from her grandparents) we unloaded everything. And guess what? We even got all the stuff put together that night. Every single bit. A couch, desks and file cabinets? (glancing at the play set outside) Psssh! It's nothing. Yesterday was mine and Heath's ten year wedding anniversary. Instead of mushy sentiment (okay, there may be some at the end of the post) here are ten random bits of trivia about our wedding day and photos of course. (all photos by Melanie Mauer)
Finally, after who knows how many hours, untold amount of curse words, and a LOT of frustration, we finished putting together Ruby's behemoth of a play set Last weekend. Two weeks ago I would have told you that I wished we had a spare $600 laying around to pay someone else to finish the blasted thing. Now that it's done, I am proud of the work we've done and feel like it was all totally worth it and I can put together all the things from now on. But if you have the money, for the luvva god, pay someone to do it for you! Parts of it were easier to put together than others, obviously. The main structure took for-friggin'-ever (it's about 12' tall) but once we got to the swing bar it went pretty smoothly...except for this metal part that H had to beat the shit out of and re-drill holes to get everything to line up properly. Yes, there are some extra holes, and yes, we had a couple pieces of extra wood laying around but it's still structurally sound and most importantly, finished!! Now Ruby can stop guilt tripping us (to grandpa: "Mommy and daddy didn't work on my swing set...."). Ruby is, of course, thrilled. She mastered the rock wall in an instant and now that the swings are up she is all "PUSH ME!" like a thousand times. This girl has got to learn how to swing herself! Me having to push her defeats the purpose of getting the swing set in the first place. She needs to entertain herself AND just getting pushed does not burn nearly enough of the boundless energy this child has. The moment we screwed the last screw into that thing I realized how stressed I was about getting it finished. My mood lifted and I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. I was seriously desperate to get the thing done and off of my very full plate. That's even how we spent Mother's Day, working on the play set, followed by sushi. I'm not really into making a huge production of holidays but by mid-afternoon that day, after seeing posts all over Facebook involving flowers and dinner cruises, and whatnot. Well, lets just say that I was a little bitter about how I'd spent my day. But, oh well, such is the life of an adult. And hey, IT'S DONE!! Woo hoo!!
This is what H and I did this weekend. Doesn't it look nice? Ha. Just kidding. This is what ours looks like: Okay, so it's not really that bad but it certainly isn't completely put together. I (naively) thought that we would be able to complete it over the weekend but it became obvious pretty quickly that was NOT going to happen. The instruction said that it would take two "reasonably skilled" people 20-24 hours to put together. What the instructions should have said was "Please add 2x the number of hours if you are parents to a toddler who suddenly becomes high maitenance." Saturday was rough but thankfully, on Sunday, she was much, much better at entertaining herself while we worked. So what if that entertainment involved a lot of rolling around in the dirt in her undies. She did step in to help us sometimes too. It was a little frustrating, the speed in which she put the screws in the holes, but we kept our mouthes shut and resisted the urge to take them from her and just do it ourselves. After all, what is another 10 minutes on a 24+ hour project? Some higher deity only knows when this project will be finished. Today and tomorrow it's raining so we probably won't get a chance to work on it until Wednesday or Thursday. Really, I hope that it doesn't take longer than two weeks. If it does I might go insane. (I don't do well with unfinished major projects) Watch, we'll get it done right before we leave for MN. Which is in about 2 weeks! Sorry Ruby, guess you'll get to play on that after we get back!
Katherine and Robert were married 03/23/2014 in a small and intimate ceremony. Here are some of my favorites from the day: Katherine's daughter, who arrival had been delayed, arrived just after the ceremony was finished. It was an emotional moment. Amazing cake by National Boulangerie It had, without a doubt, the most buttery of buttercream frosting I've ever tasted.
Two days before Valentine's day, so just over a month ago, my sister-in-law suffered a miscarriage. She was 14 weeks along. I got the call from my brother that night and while I won't go into details all I can say is 1) I didn't know miscarriages could happen that way, and 2) The strength and motherly instincts that my sister-in-law showed that night...let's just say I am in awe and can't think of anything more eloquent to say other than Mad Props. Seriously.
I don't know my SIL as well as I would like but my brother and I are super close and had talked constantly about pregnancy and child-related things since they got the BFP. When my family came down to visit in January I took him to Target and hooked him up with some clearance deals on various baby items. Then, in all my vast, vast knowledge (ya know, from having only one kid) I took him through the baby department, told him what things were, and advised on what was really needed and what was not. I've known people who've suffered from miscarriages but I've never been privy to details other than, "I had a miscarriage a few years back" Like I said above I won't go into details because it's pretty awful, but I've never been so up close and personal with this situation. I've never heard my brother sound so sad and so empty before. Thinking about how he sounded that night and when I talked to him the next morning makes me cry...it was just horrible. At the hospital they were able to find out the sex of the baby. It was a little boy. They named him Derek Michael, the middle name in honor of my SIL's father who recently passed away. He's been cremated and is now home with his mom and dad. I am so immensely sad for both my brother and SIL but I don't feel like I can express just how sorry I am with words. Whenever I try whatever I say just sounds horribly insufficient. There's been a lot of "I'm so sorry" and "I don't know what to say." because both are true and that's about all I got. It feels selfish to talk about MY feelings in a situation like this but I'm sad too, I lost my nephew. A nephew that I was very, very excited to meet and get to know. I'm sad for them, I'm sad for grandparents, I'm sad for Ruby who won't get to know her cousin but grateful that she's too young to wrap her head around what happened. Again, the distance between Minnesota and Kentucky is a curse because I so want to be there for them. Buuuut...as selfish and maybe awful as this is, I am glad to have a 900 mile buffer between myself and horrible sadness. Not that I haven't cried or been horribly sad, because I most certainly have. When it comes down to it though, I'd trade the buffer for a chance to be there with them. Thankfully they've had overwhelming support from friends, family, and even strangers, both online and in person. One woman that my brother had called regarding daycare happened to return his call the day after the miscarriage. My brother told her what had happened and a few days later they received a letter in the mail from her saying how sorry she was and sharing with them her own experience with miscarriage. My brother texted me and said, "People are so nice. It's amazing. I've wanted to cry just because of the support we've gotten." This past weekend was b-e-a-utiful! FINALLY there was lots of sunny goodness. Walks were taken, yoga was done, birthdays were celebrated, sidewalks were chalked, kilns were fired, and naps were taken. Oh, and the room darkening curtains seemed to do the trick. Yay for little girls sleeping until 8:30! (four years ago I would have been livid at waking up by 8:30 on the weekends, lol)
We are now officially in the terrible threes and it's been, well, pretty terrible. Oh, Rubes. She doesn't listen AT ALL. I can tell her something ten times and she won't do it. For example, putting her coat on in the morning so we can get to daycare on time so I can get to work on time. I am probably more generous than I should be as far as how many times I tell her to do something before some sort of punishment is dished out (spanking, time out, revoking of privileges). I guess I do that because I want to give her a chance to do the right thing before I deal out the punishment that I dealt to her not 5 minutes ago for some other offense (or maybe even the same offense). Other offenses are eating on the couch, shoes on the couch, messing with the cats, spitting, etc. I seriously feel like all I do lately is punish her for one thing or another. She doesn't DO crazy things. Like, I've never found her in the kitchen with a full bag of flour spread all over the place. Well, I did find her behind a chair spreading Neosporin all over her face...and there was the incident with the Chapstick...And when she ate all those TUMS....Okay, so she does do crazy stuff like that. But at least in the case of those things I can find the humor in them. What I don't find funny and what super pisses me off is the back talking and attitude that she gives us. She does this chin thing where you'll say something and she'll look at you, jut out her chink and go, "ungh!" And recently she's started doing the same thing but instead of the chin jut and "ungh" she looks at you and hisses like a snake. There were a couple times this past weekend where I told her to do something, probably a billion times, and she walked away from me down the hall and I heard her say, "shut up" under her breath. She can be kind of cruel too. There have been several times where she's said stuff like, "I don't like you!" and "Go away from me!" One time H walked in the room and she said, "I don't want you here!" I don't particularly care that she says, "I don't like you" to me. I don't know if she understands what she's saying or not and it's not my job to be her friend, I'm her parent. H on the other hand does take it quite personally when she is mean like that and his feelings get hurt.
I've spoken with her daycare provider and other than wanting stuff when she wants it and taking it, she is fine there. She assured me that the behavior that I described to her is typical of a three year old. I figured as much but I wanted to make sure that there wasn't something going on that needed to be addressed. It was nice to have confirmation that I am not just being a terrible parent after all. On top of the general terribleness she has suddenly decided that 6:00 am is an appropriate wake up time. So. Not. Cool. H got up with her this past Saturday (and I slept til 10am-glorious!) and then I got up with her on Sunday. Needless to say it was my turn to be grumpy pants. So what if 6am is the time that I usually get up to go to work. I swear my body goes into weekend mode and it does not matter that I've been up at the time 5 days in a row. Weekends are for waking up no earlier than 8am. although I'd prefer 9am. When I asked why she was getting up so early she said, "Because it's light out!" Ha, barely! Light blocking curtains have officially been purchased and I am looking forward to sleeping a little later this weekend. Or at the very least really, really hoping for it. |
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